El Morro residents agree to move out

Feb. 28, 2006, is date for those in mobile homes to leave; rent payments, legal fees part of deal with state.The residents of more than 200 homes at the El Morro Village mobile home park have agreed to move out in four months, ending a bitter court battle with the state.

The 75-year-old mobile home community is on land that the state bought in 1979. The state parks department plans to turn the land into a 60-space campground and a 200-space parking lot.

Residents’ leases expired at the end of 2004, but most of El Morro’s nearly 300 residents chose to stay and fight their eviction in court. After Orange County Superior Court Judge Kim Dunning in early August made a summary judgment in favor of the state, the state and residents’ attorneys began to negotiate.

They agreed around Sept. 1 on a settlement under which residents will move out by Feb. 28, 2006, or be subject to a $5,000 penalty and forcible eviction, said attorney Gerald Klein, who represents about 95% of residents fighting eviction. He and state officials disclosed the settlement Friday

The state had initially asked that residents remove their homes, but under the settlement it will instead take the responsibility for removing them. State parks department spokesman Roy Stearns said the state will try to sell the homes that have value, and those proceeds may cover the cost of removing the remainder of the homes.

Residents also agreed to pay $650,000 in back rent and legal costs as well as rent they owe from Sept. 1, 2005 through March 1, 2006, Stearns said.

Klein said the settlement was difficult to reach, and residents are “crushed” by having to leave their uniquely close-knit community.

“This is the only community I’ve seen in Orange County where everyone knew everyone and had watched people’s children and grandchildren grow up, where people actually watched out for each other,” Klein said.

Some residents will leave right away, but others will stay because they have nowhere else to go, he said.

“There’s been a number of us [who] this is our home, and we do not have the means to buy real estate,” said Dick Day, who has had a home at El Morro since 1994. He and his wife Charlotte live at the park only two to three months a year -- the rest of the time they spend in Africa, working with AIDS patients. Their children stay in their home while they’re gone.

The Days hoped they would get to stay, because, Dick Day said, “it’s been a wonderful community.”

Michael Kaylor, who has lived at El Morro for five years, said he won’t have to move too far away, but if the land becomes a campground he’ll pull his kids out of El Morro Elementary School, because he doesn’t think it will be safe.

“It’s a shame,” Kaylor said of having to leave. “This is what Orange County was when I grew up 30-some years ago, and now it’s going away.”

He said El Morro Village was the last place in Orange County where people who aren’t among the “super-rich” could afford to live.

“There’s a lot of seniors on fixed incomes .... They’re going to need to move out of state,” Kaylor said.

Stearns said the agreement is “a reasonable settlement” and that state officials are enthusiastic about opening what will likely be one of the last new coastal public campgrounds in California.

“Mainly we think this is a good settlement because it finally ends this prolonged dispute and litigation and gives us a date certain when we will take this place over and convert it to a campground,” he said.

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